New grocery services bring the checkout line to you

By Mike D. Smith

June 29, 2016Updated: July 1, 2016 10:45pm

Photo: Melissa Phillip, Staff

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3. Nicole Cappelli, an H-E-B store manager, delivers a cart full of groceries to Leal, a 32-year-old mother
of young twin daughters. Leal estimates the curbside-pickup service saves her 1½ hours per grocery trip. At least 10 other stores and third-party businesses offer delivery or pickup services
in the Houston area. less

3. Nicole Cappelli, an H-E-B store manager, delivers a cart full of groceries to Leal, a 32-year-old mother
of young twin daughters. Leal estimates the curbside-pickup service saves her 1½ hours per grocery ... more

Photo: Melissa Phillip, Staff

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2. Monica Leal drives from her home in Cypress to the H-E-B on Bunker Hill to pick up her order. She can pay the bill and the $4.99 convenience fee without having to step out of her car.

2. Monica Leal drives from her home in Cypress to the H-E-B on Bunker Hill to pick up her order. She can pay the bill and the $4.99 convenience fee without having to step out of her car.

Photo: Melissa Phillip, Staff

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Nicole Cappelli, left, e store manager, talks with Monica Leal of Cypress after loading groceries at the curbside grocery service at H-E-B, 9710 Katy Fwy., Tuesday, June 21, 2016, in Houston. With twin 20-month-old girls and a full-time job, Monica says it has been a lifesaver, giving her more flexibility in her own schedule since curbside service has removed the hassle from grocery shopping. ( Melissa Phillip / Houston Chronicle ) less

Nicole Cappelli, left, e store manager, talks with Monica Leal of Cypress after loading groceries at the curbside grocery service at H-E-B, 9710 Katy Fwy., Tuesday, June 21, 2016, in Houston. With twin ... more

Photo: Melissa Phillip, Staff

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Nicole Cappelli, left, e store manager, talks with Monica Leal of Cypress after loading groceries at the curbside grocery service at H-E-B, 9710 Katy Fwy., Tuesday, June 21, 2016, in Houston. With twin 20-month-old girls and a full-time job, Monica says it has been a lifesaver, giving her more flexibility in her own schedule since curbside service has removed the hassle from grocery shopping. ( Melissa Phillip / Houston Chronicle ) less

Nicole Cappelli, left, e store manager, talks with Monica Leal of Cypress after loading groceries at the curbside grocery service at H-E-B, 9710 Katy Fwy., Tuesday, June 21, 2016, in Houston. With twin ... more

A customer waits for a load of groceries at the curbside service of an H-E-B. Technology is transforming consumers' shopping habits. ﻿

A customer waits for a load of groceries at the curbside service of an H-E-B. Technology is transforming consumers' shopping habits. ﻿

Photo: Melissa Phillip, Staff

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1. A printout helps H-E-B fill an
order for curbside pickup, a growing trend for shoppers who want to skip crowded store aisles.

1. A printout helps H-E-B fill an
order for curbside pickup, a growing trend for shoppers who want to skip crowded store aisles.

Photo: Melissa Phillip, Staff

New grocery services bring the checkout line to you

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Having twins put Monica Leal in an even bigger time crunch for grocery shopping. Loading a pair of squirming 20-month-olds into a car is the first challenge, and once she manages the drive and the hunt for parking she has to find a two-seater shopping cart. Keeping the girls happy while navigating the aisles is a whole other story.

So picking a store boils down to one simple question: "What's the fastest thing I can do?"

For Leal, that means ordering ahead and driving from her home in Cypress to a covered drive-up station outside the H-E-B on Bunker Hill, where she pays the bill while the groceries are loaded into her SUV. The deal is so attractive to her that she is willing to drive past other stores, including a closer H-E-B. She estimates the trip saves her about 1½ hours that she can reinvest in family, work and preparing for the twins' new sibling she's pregnant with.

"Heck yeah, I wouldn't want to live without it," said Leal, 32, who added she's now ready to try home delivery.

Just last week, a new app-based delivery service called Shipt began making home deliveries from H-E-B stores across a large portion of metro Houston.

Stores and third-party services are rapidly increasing their presence here as retail's click-it-and-get-it revolution shifts into hyper-speed, competing with one another to offer convenience. Existing limits are expected to fuel even more innovation.

Technology is rapidly transforming the American consumer's shopping habits.

As the online world's instant nature has sped up people's expectations, more shoppers have grown comfortable with click-and-buy in addition to see-and-buy, especially with recognizable brands. Any retailer not offering that option is feeling pressure, said Partha Krishnamurthy, a marketing professor at the C.T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston.

"It's one thing to be the first to enter," he said. "It's also quite risky to be the last one to enter the market."

Since the ordering and purchase processes are much speedier, delivery is retail's "final frontier," said Kit Yarrow, a consumer psychology researcher with Golden Gate University. Technology has created new expectations: "How do we get it? Are you kidding? We actually have to wait?" Yarrow said.

Amazon Prime, though certainly not the first of its kind, is considered the game-changer as the global retailer put its heavy distribution muscle into its online network and its grocery arm, Amazon Prime Now. Locally, Rice Epicurean Market began home grocery delivery from its Fountain View Drive location in 2000, and today serves 39 ZIP codes mainly in the western Houston metro area.

Areawide, the number of grocery delivery or pickup options is already in double digits.

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What's pushing retailers to innovate with such convenience services is the demand of time-crunched consumers who don't want to get bogged down by hunts for vacant parking spaces, crowded aisles, waiting behind people who empty their coupon books at checkout, rude shoppers or clerks.

"I think people want our human interactions to be as robotic and predictable as our online interactions," Yarrow said. "Our tolerance for hassles is just lowering down to ground-level."

The predictability of clicking a button to get things, pay for things and set pickup or delivery times cuts down hassles to website, app or Internet connection issues. "Simplicity makes us feel in control, and control is the antidote to anxiety," Yarrow said.

H-E-B's curbside-pickup service also lends itself to self-control, shopper Stephanie Delmonico said as she picked up an order at the Bunker Hill store. Delmonico estimates she's saved money since using the service since it has cut down on "impulse buying" when she's roaming the aisles. It's worth the service fee and paying tolls on the Sam Houston Tollway to Bunker Hill from her home in Jersey Village.

As with anything, once people get used to a certain level of comfort and ease, there's no going back. They'll not only begin to demand it, they'll expect it, Yarrow said.

There are enough options to meet many Houstonians' expectations and then some.

Kroger brought its Clicklist curbside program to select Houston stores and is adding others. Wal-Mart's curbside arrived in October and is being expanded.

App-based Instacart delivers groceries, as do Burpy and the homegrown Memorial Concierge. Deliv can get goods from Macy's and Best Buy to doorsteps. UberEATS utilizes its roving drivers to deliver meals, with GrubHub and DoorDash partnering with restaurants.

Google Express has moved in, offering overnight and two-day delivery from several retailers.

Beepi and Carvana allow people to buy and sell used cars without leaving their driveway; Beepi also facilitates leasing.

Shipt is launching with H-E-B and Central Market in Houston with a membership-based service for $99 a year that offers free delivery for orders of more than $35 within an hour of orders being placed, Shipt community manager Anne Adams said. The service will not deliver alcohol, tobacco or prescription drugs, she added.

Shipt is hiring a delivery force of up to 300 drivers in the metro area.

"If we can take some things off the to-do list, then I really think that's what people are loving about it," Adams said.

Houston will be Shipt's 26th market, and it already is active in San Antonio.

New and existing convenience services often operate within specific geographic boundaries. For instance, Shipt's Houston coverage area arcs from Pasadena toward League City, then swings through west and north Houston and its suburbs in a wide band curving toward Kingwood.

Usually, a retailer or company draws on extensive market research when deciding where to offer service. That may include income levels and levels of online engagement, but also places with dense populations for short-distance trips.

In many cases, the services are inaccessible in rural and lower-income areas.

Those gaps could fuel more innovation, opening opportunities for entrepreneurs to find ways to serve those areas, Krishnamurthy said.

A homegrown Houston-area service has done that. When NASA scientist Tara Ruttley began The Grocery Station in 2011 - a few years before grocery home delivery began flourishing in Houston - she didn't have access to powerful market analytics.

Her service grew organically - it has a website but no app - starting out in the League City area and spreading to downtown, Pearland and Katy, capturing working moms, day care centers, elderly residents and parents buying for college students. It also struck a partnership with The Center, which requests service for developmentally disabled residents in apartments.

The Grocery Station's market areas were determined by people who approached Ruttley. She said she employs only a handful of shoppers, and her business model depends on the trusting, long-term relationships built with clients who personally know who's shopping for them.

"It was about having the right employees and not forcing it," Ruttley said. "The right employees came along and it took off in their areas."

The smaller size also gives The Grocery Station more flexibility to spread into rural areas, Ruttley said. A driver who gets a call from a rural area, for example, can negotiate a service fee and get the job done.

Conventional competition will decide which convenience services last, but there always will be evolution and room for growth, Krishnamurthy said.

"At the end of the day, the marketplace looks for the most viable set of exchanges," he said. "That's the way it's always been and that's the way it will always be."